Emotional Benefits of Breast-feeding Now Understood

Check out how incredible the human body is: Researchers have now uncovered how mothers deliver a hormonal burst to breastfeeding babies which triggers feelings of love and the baby’s trust that all of its needs are met. WOW! That’s simply incredible. The human body never ceases to amaze me.

Take a bite out of this tripper: When a baby breastfeeds, the suckling reflex triggers a hormonal cascade–large surges of the hormone oxytocin are released from mom’s brain–that provide baby with a sense of well-being. Science has known this, but what it didn’t know was how. The quandary was that the production of oxytocin from mother’s brain cells was just not enough to provide this response in baby alone, yet large surges in the hormone have been measured. Through computer simulation, however, researchers from China, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom found that the female brain recruits dendrites–whose normal job is to create communication channels between brain cells–into secreting the hormone. Mama mia! Now is there anybody who doesn’t find this as mind-blowing as I do?

The only thing I can say in my awe is that this is yet another example of Innate Intelligence working miraculous feats of living wonderment in what separates man from cadaver. This same Innate Intelligence know exactly which chemicals and neurotransmitters to secrete at all times, and frankly, I find it humbling. Whenever I come across man’s attempt to “improve” upon physiology through artificial means, I shake my head in contempt, simply because I know man can’t do it better than mother nature can–not now, not ever. But, sometimes, just understanding is enough. I bow down to the power of nature.